The Truck Keys in the Hayfield

I did not do it to hurt him, but I would be lying if I told you I did not know it would land.

Shane texted me in February. It said, Got the house listed. Megan’s mom is letting us rent her place in town for a while.

Girls love it. Mom says you’re doing good. I wrote back, I am. Proud of you for the house. That’s hard.

He wrote, Not as hard as some things.

In early spring I got the 4440 serviced and went over the New Holland end to end. The belts were tired. One of them had a lacing I did not trust.

I ordered new lacing and pins from the dealer in Springfield and put them in a coffee can on the workbench.

First cutting was the second Saturday in May.

Dustin came out at seven in the black truck, Jake’s tag swinging. The orchardgrass was knee high and headed out, the sky clear, the ground firm.

We had mowed Wednesday, tedded Thursday, raked that morning. It was baling weather.

At a quarter to eight a car I did not recognize came up the gravel. It was a little gray hatchback, Megan’s mom’s.

Shane got out of it in old jeans, a sweat-stained cap and a pair of work boots so new they still had the tag string on one heel.

He walked out across the field to where we were. He did not step high over the windrows. He stepped right into them.

“You said bring boots,” he said.

“I did.”

“I haven’t run a baler since I was seventeen,” he said. “Dad’ll tell you I wasn’t any good at it then.”

“Dustin will teach you,” I said, and Dustin, who had never once in his life been the one teaching Shane anything, stood up a little straighter.

We baled all morning. Shane rode on the fender of the tractor to learn it, then drove the rake on Ray’s Ford while Dustin ran the baler and I walked behind checking every bale.

By noon he had a sunburn of his own and hay down the back of his shirt and he had not complained one time.

Around two that afternoon, halfway down the long row by the creek, the New Holland made the sound I had been waiting for all spring.

A slap and a flutter. The lacing on the third belt had let go.

Dustin shut it down. All three of us walked around to the back of the baler and looked at the belt hanging loose in the chamber like a broken shoelace.

“Can we fix it here?” Shane asked.

“We can fix it here,” I said. “Lacing’s in the coffee can in the truck. Dusty, get the pins and the pliers.”

Changing a baler belt is not hard, but it is a three-person job if you want it done right.

You have to cut the bad lacing out square, line the new hooks up, press them in even, and then thread the belt back through and pin the ends together under tension.

I cut the end square with a utility knife. Dustin held the belt flat on the tailgate of the black truck.

Shane pressed the new lacing in with the pliers, one hook at a time, slow and careful, with his tongue in the corner of his mouth like Jake used to do.

We were kneeling in the stubble with that belt between the three of us when Shane stopped pressing.